The River Runs Uphill
by Agent Malkere
Summary: The last thing the Tams were expecting to find when they got home was their daughter sitting in the middle of their bed spread. Implied Rayne and Simon/Kaylee.


The River Runs Uphill

_**The River Runs Uphill** _

_Agent Malkere_

**Disclaimer: If _Firefly_ were mine folks, a) there would have been at LEAST a second season and b) I'd have a lot more money. It's all Joss Whedon's. sad sigh**

They hadn't been expecting anyone to be there when they got back. Gabriel and Reagan Tam had spent most of the evening at the opera and having supper at a friend's dinner party. The opera had been most enjoyable and had been preformed superbly in the dead language of Italian. It had been years since Reagan had seen _Carmon _and she would have enjoyed the excursion even more if… _they_ had been there. Reagan tried to push the thoughts of her two dead children out of her mind. That was all in the past, nothing to be done about it now. They had long ago turned to dust and been blown away by the wind of some distant, unknown planet. It had been _years_ since the two had dropped off the map into oblivion, so when she and Gabriel walked into their bedroom the sight that greeted them was nothing if not surprising and startling.

Sitting in the middle of the expansive blue bedspread was a girl, a young woman to be more precise. She appeared to be around twenty with long, wavy, dark brown hair that fell down over her shoulder like a curtain, hiding her face from view. An old, thick novel with gold leafed pages lay open on the knees of her crossed legs, her head bent over it as she studied the words intently. The young woman was dressed in slightly battered clothing that any well to do family on Osiris would have scoffed at, but she wore with no shame, seemingly at complete ease. Old khaki cargo pants were tucked into scuffed, black combat boots. An emerald green shirt fitted efficiently to the woman's torso without clinging underneath a long sleeved mahogany jacket that had been patched at the elbows numerous times and would have fallen almost to her knees if she had been standing up. Fingerless black leather gloves covered pale, graceful hands like a second skin as she turned another page of the book on her lap, not even bothering to glance up as Gabriel Tam flipped on the light switch. But the most unnerving thing about the young woman was not the fact that she was casually perched in the center of the Tam's bed as though she owned the place. No, it was the revolver strapped to her thigh with a low slung gun belt that truly put the husband and wife at unease.

After a few seconds of silence which seemed to take up an eternity, the young woman slowly lifted dark liquid brown eyes that held Gabriel and Reagan Tam transfixed as she stared at them.

"Hello, mother, father. I'm home." The woman continued to stare at the elderly couple neutrally, gauging their reactions. She let out a faint puff of breath and pushed her long hair back over one shoulder. As the dead silence continued to stretch out she cocked her head to one side as though listening to their very thoughts. "He was right. You should have listened to him, should have read my letters. It was a code. A very obvious code. Not just a silly game. You shouldn't have abandoned your children for tea parties and operas and good social status. It's not what families do." Her voice was still flat, neutral, containing none of the bitter edge that her words should have implied. She was simply stating facts. And that was what broke Reagan Tam's heart. The vice that had been crushing her lungs finally cracked and she found the voice to speak.

"Ri-River! Darling! You're alive!" The tears running down Reagan's face were ruining her carefully applied makeup, but for once she didn't care. The older woman stepped forward hesitantly as if unsure if this were merely another figment from her dreams taunting her again. River's face remained stoic and unmoved.

"Of course I'm still alive. I always thought the wanted posters made it rather obvious even if they have expired by now. They always take down the posters when the fugitives die."

"Fugitives?" Reagan's voice quivered. Her eyes widened until it seemed she had no eyelids at all.

"The hands of blue wanted their pretty little weapon back so they could make her more perfect by sticking needles in her eyes. The Alliance wanted their psychic assassin back so that they could continue to reaffirm their power. But the boy wanted his mei mei back because he loved her and knew they were hurting her." River pinned her parents like bugs in a glass case again with her eyes. "Guess who won."

"Psychic assassin? Weapon? What are you talking about? Are you out of your mind?" Gabriel Tam had finally regained the ability to speak, but the best he could do was splutter, his normal rounded vowels forgotten. A hit of sadness touched River's face at last.

"Yes, I was for a while – a very long while. Secrets that did not belong to me tormented me. Sent nightmares of needles and knives and stole away sanity and Simon died a little more inside each day when he could only watch and not help. And they jumbled the words that came out of their weapon's mouth so that no one could understand, so that she spoke only in riddles. And I felt everything. Thoughts, feelings, emotions – that weren't mine. That wouldn't go away. That I couldn't block out. I forgot how to walk on my feet and hear with my ears. They took away the girl and left nothing – only and empty shell in a girl's shape waiting for salvation she knew would not come. Until Miranda. Until the secret was gone and the weapon remembered how to be a girl again." River closed the book on her knees and gently lay it to one side. She straightened up slightly and for a moment her eyes lost their focus as she stared at something only she could see in the middle distance. "Remembered how to walk on her feet and hear with her ears. Learned how to be real again. And she changed. I changed. My riddles became words and Simon learned to smile again as his sister came back to life.

"I'm not the little girl who danced on stages and corrected Simon's textbooks and made up stories about Browncoats riding dinosaurs any more. That River died a long time ago on a cold steel chair with a needle in her brain pan. Now, I dance on catwalks and in cargo holds and fly a ship under a Browncoat captain and carry a gun because I'm a best shot on that ship. In only a month, I will be an aunt to my brother's child. I am free like the water that has learned to run uphill and I am in love with a man older than I am and he loves me, too. He asked me to marry him and I said yes." River pulled off one of her fingerless gloves to display the simple silver band that she wore on her ring finger. "You would not like him. He has a thorny hide like milkweed and he is all bad temper until you learn to weave your way past the prickles to the soft, squishy insides. Simon still doesn't like him, nearly shot him himself despite his Hippocratic oath when he found out we were together. Yelled and yelled for hours until his voice ran out and he finally listened to reason. No, you would not be able to see past his exterior just like Simon couldn't, but it doesn't matter because I love him. He makes me happy, reminds me how to be sane when I forget. He will make a good uncle when the baby comes – always had a weakness for children though he doesn't like to show it." A gentle smile lifted River's features in an expression of contentment Gabriel Tam only ever remember seeing on his daughter's face before when she danced.

"Baby? _Simon's_ baby? Do you mean that Simon is married?" asked Reagan, her voice low with shock as she stared at the young woman who used to be her daughter. River held her mother's gaze, unblinking, her smile melting away the instant the older woman spoke.

"Yes, he is. Finally unstuck his foot from his mouth two years ago and proposed. Realized how much he loved her and asked her to make it forever. He finally learned to fly on his wings after escaping the nest instead of merely tripping over them. He has found his keeper and his place in the 'verse. He needed one. Now, he doesn't have to keep searching for them any more. And soon he and his keeper shall make me an aunt and then not long after that I shall say the vows and make myself a wife. Wife to a man who could not round vowels if he tried, but who understands the dance of blood and death that I have learned to stay alive. I need no more than that. I am happy. Simon is happy. Peace is found in _Serenity_."

"Then why have you come back? What are you doing here?" It was Gabriel who spoke this time and he shivered involuntarily as River turned and fixed her owl-eyed stared on him next.

"I am here to close the last of the doors and windows still letting in the cold draughts. I am here to cut and break the ties, to release the remaining bonds. I am here to tell you that your children are dead. The children you knew, the River and Simon you both knew, are no more – cut down and dead by your own hands. All that remains of them are pictures and captures and fading memories. Yes," her eyes hardened, "you should feel guilty. In your haste, you forgot how to be a family and gave your joy and happiness away to society and the Alliance on a silver plate. You did not read the cries for help between the lines of the girl's letters or believe the boy when he told you that they were there. There was nothing else the children could do but fade away and die as they became someone else. You lost all say how we sculpted our lives when you turned your backs on us to worship your golden idols. I am here to at last give closure and an ending and to say goodbye. You will probably never hear from either of us again nor from the grandchild you do not deserve to have. Maybe some day your guilt will wear thin and perhaps you learn to live with what you have done, but that is for you to decide. Time fades everything and even shadows grow thin from lack of rest. The children who are dead to you have their own family now who loves them for their flaws. There may even come a day when you learn to do the same. I am here as the messenger and have said what I came to say. The river must continue her run uphill to freedom now. Goodbye."

River uncrossed her legs and stood up from the bed. She stepped to the window, opened the pane, and put one foot on the sill before glancing back at her parents one last time and then wordlessly melted into the shadows of the night. Nothing remained to prove she had even been there except a slightly wrinkled bed spread and the leather bound book lying atop the covers.


End file.
